… random observations from my journeys through a well-lived life

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Every day since Christmas, various media sources have been running retrospectives of 2016. While I’m happy not to have to listen to screechy Mimi warbling “All I want for Christmas, is you” or Annie Lennox moaning that she wants to “frolic and play, the Eskimo way”, revisiting the major events if last year is like binge-reading the obituaries for a week. Looking back serves no purpose – we can’t change the past and mourning gets old. Reading Facebook is a downer as well, with folks despairing about all of the famous and almost-famous folks who passed on. Yes, it’s sad, but consider the awful natural and man-made tragedies afflicting the world, and the hundreds of thousands of refugees and innocent bystanders who have lost…

Normally, I’m not a gadget gal, but in the last six months, I’ve purchased two electronic wonders that have changed the way I cook and that actually make being in the kitchen not so mind-numbing. Don’t get me wrong – I love to cook and eating good food is even better, but after more than fifty years of making meals, it’s become tedious most of the time. I mean, how creative can you be with boneless skinless chicken breasts and thighs, fish, pork and beef after you’ve made thousands of meals? Plus, Hub will eat anything except cauliflower, so if I decide to make omelettes three times a week, he doesn’t complain. This is a man who has yogurt and Holy Crap cereal with…

Alan Watts (1915-1973) was a British writer, a philosopher and a theologian, and he was definitely not ordinary. Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit—to the “conquest” of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature. Your body does not eliminate poisons by knowing their names. To try to control fear or depression or boredom by calling them names is to resort to superstition of trust in curses and invocations. It is so easy to see…

Many years ago, I loaned a sewing machine to a relative. It came back, shall we say, non-operational. I took it into the repair shop and was advised the circuit board had been fried, probably by a power spike. The cost of repair – $400. Uh, no. I had another old machine in a cupboard somewhere and my grandmother’s half-ton treadle machine was under a pile of stuff in the basement somewhere. I’d love to give it away to a good home, but no one wants it, even with the original instructions and attachments. I dithered about whether to ask her to get the thing fixed, but decided the aggravation simply wasn’t worth it. Of course I bought a new machine – my dream…

Monday, I had the most fun experience in a long while. A photo shoot. At home instead of in a studio. In fact, I did more wardrobe changes than a diva at a concert, because we had to have the right ‘look’. And I loved the process! The last batch of professional shots I had taken were five years ago, and I never really liked that they were so starkly lit and the poses so predictable. They were inexpensive and suited a purpose for a while but I wanted something different to use on social media sites and for book covers. Kathryn Hollinrake is a professional photographer. I don’t mean someone with an expensive camera and a bunch of long lenses strewn about, either. This…